The soil in the raised beds at the community garden is so hard, the carrots are literally tying themselves in knots. Some of them had greens as tall as my head, with just a round nubbin of carrot maybe an inch big. The above ground growth looks so lush, I didn't suspect what was happening under the surface.
One of the other volunteers was working on a bed whose bordering planks are rotting out. One whole side of the bed was disassembled, giving me a view of the cross section of the soil to about 1.5' deep. I wasn't expecting it to be so homogenous, all one color and terribly stiff. These beds aren't walked on, nothing is happening to compress the soil, it's just got hardly any humus. It's even touching the earth below, so worms and ants should be able to travel through it freely.
You can't sink a trowel into it. You can chip at it, and it makes a *chunk chunk* noise and comes apart a few 1/2" crumbs at a time. The small chunks can't be easily mushed or broken by my fingers.
Most of the gardening I've personally done, has been in hydroponic clay balls or directly in water. The place I lived in SF had dangerously tainted soil, so I just kept all my stuff in aquaponics. I haven't had much experience with veggies, so this is my first hands-on look at this style of growing. Most of my knowledge has been from reading and videos.
These beds are in bad shape. I'm a bit surprised, because I thought they'd know how to prevent it getting like this-- but I don't know how quickly or easily it reaches this state, or what the preventative measures are. The garden has been here for over a decade.
It's interesting, because they have a pretty large compost setup. Three cubic pallet-sized stalls, plus a pile to the side. All in varying stages of full, the results pulled out and used on the beds regularly-- but it's apparently not nearly enough.
The guy working on the bed walls says the beds need to be tilled. That might be a temporary fix, but it's going to be tough even for a machine.
There must be a better way to handle this.
My impulse would be to just plant loads of radishes and leave it until next season. And/or toss in loads of mulch and Ruth Stout the thing. The beds have sunk about 6" below the edges of their walls, so there's space. But what do I know??
For most of my life I've not had access to a yard to grow things, so it's good to finally get some direct learning experiences.
#Gardening
#RaisedBeds
#Compaction
#Carrots
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